Speaker
Description
Properties of high-density strong-interaction matter of relevance for astrophysical scenarios that involve neutron stars are discussed. It is argued that theoretical insights from recent lattice comparisons of effective QCD models for vanishing baryo-chemical potential but finite isospin can guide realistic model building at high baryon density, as this regime is currently not accessible to first-principles numerical calculations of the QCD partition function. Special attention is payed to the chiral properties of high-density matter and the nature of a possible first-order chiral phase transition. In this transition hadronic parity-partners, in particular baryons, become spectrally degenerate with finite (pole) masses, as expected from general insight into the mass generation in QCD. Using a parity-doublet effective model in a RG invariant mean-field treatment, implications for cold and hot neutron-star matter are presented.
